PRO Unlimited的首席执行官凯文·阿克罗伊德（Kevin Akeroyd）展望了技术支持、人驱动的服务平台业务

几年来，临时劳动力行业一直有传言称，MSP需要带来更多价值。一些公司已经开始进行内部变革，在某些情况下还开始了新的管理层。

Much in the staffing and contingent workforce market environment has changed over the past 20+ years, including business requirements, technology, business models and other factors. And many of these changes seem to be accelerating, particularly in response to COVID-19. It is natural, therefore, that we are increasingly seeing MSPs beginning to evolve. Indeed, those that don’t will find it increasingly difficult to thrive and grow in the future.

9月下旬，我们有机会与成为PRO Unlimited’s CEO in July 2020.PRO Unlimitedis a well-established managed services player in the contingent workforce space. The company is notable as a vendor-neutral MSP with its own VMS technology. According to a Julypress release, “Former CEO, Andy Schultz, stepped down after leading the company since its inception nearly three decades ago.”

Akeroyd is an industry outsider, with a technology industry background. Prior to joining PRO Unlimited, the press release stated, “Akeroyd served as CEO at Cision where he took the company public on the NYSE before selling it for $2.8 billion to Platinum Equity in January 2020. Prior to Cision, Akeroyd has been General Manager at bothOracle以及Salesforce，运营着在云软件、服务和数据领域处于领先地位的业务部门。在职业生涯早期，阿克罗伊德曾在Jigsaw、Acxiom和RR Donnelley等公司担任高管职务。”

Akeroyd在Pro无限公司首席执行官中的第一个举措是将公司总部从佛罗里达州的博卡拉顿市迁到加利福尼亚的旧金山，这一改变符合我们对Akeroyd公司愿景和技术在其中的作用。

What follows is a sampling of topics discussed in our hour-long, detailed conversation in which Akeroyd shared his view of the contingent workforce industry and how he saw PRO Unlimited addressing organizations’ present and future contingent workforce requirements.

We've covered PRO Unlimited in the past. This Spend Matters' PRO piece gives readers adetailed overview of the PRO Unlimited solution.

Akeroyd's view of the contingent workforce industry

Kevin Akeroyd told us about what struck him about the contingent workforce industry as he became acquainted with it in the past months. Akeroyd noted that, over the past 20+ years, contingent staffing had gone from tactical staff aug to strategic at the C-suite level of enterprises, as the percent of total workforce grew.

Akeroyd said, “Now it is not unusual to find organizations where contingent work makes up 40% of the total workforce. And most companies I've talked to want to make that number 50 or 60%.”

Akeroyd also pointed to the increase in the skilled white-collar contingent workforce as a reason for it becoming more strategic for organizations.

Akeroyd explained how he saw contingent workforce becoming a high strategic priority at the senior executive level, not only for the CHRO. For the CFO, he said, “It's a top four, spend category, my entire corporate P&L in most industries, this is literally going to move earnings per share.

“And then, as it always happens, things get more tech and data related, especially with all of the data regulation and the risk associated with running afoul of things like employee data privacy, etc. Now, all of a sudden, the CIO, really cares. And add the complexity and the compliance risks, diversity, inclusion and work from home, and that's a hairy beast. Personally, I've been here before,” he said. “I watched it happen in CRM and customer service, I watched it happen in marketing.”

Akeroyd's visions for PRO Unlimited's growth

关于他加入PRO Unlimited，凯文·阿克罗伊德（Kevin Akeroyd）说：“我观察了这家公司的规模、规模和地理足迹。我想，‘哇，这不仅是一个很好的行业，而且这家公司已经有了一个很好的开端，考虑到它30多年来为市场提供的服务，以及它的人员、专业知识和服务能力。’

“It’s also got a couple of private equity firms with $40 billion assets under management that are interested to invest in this category and in this company. When I went through that thought process, it became very, very apparent to me that I really, really wanted to come to this industry and be the CEO of PRO Unlimited.”

Akeroyd discussed his vision for PRO Unlimited, based on his background in tech and data. “I’ve learned from other industries that businesses don’t want to deal with 30 or 40 little fragmented vendors. They really want a kind of a reference platform, like a Workday for human resources or a库帕用于支出管理。那么，谁来为临时员工管理做这件事呢？这将需要一种平台方法。”

阿克罗伊德煞费苦心地详细阐述了他的意思——在这么长的一篇文章中，细节太多了。从本质上讲，这意味着拥有一个统一的技术基础设施，能够以数据为核心提供服务和新服务。

“我是一个数据人，就像我是一个技术人一样。技术领域总是有一个技术支持的增值服务的组成部分。我认为数据往往比它所在的软件容器更有价值。在我职业生涯的大部分时间里，我不仅是一个信仰者，而且是一个将数据、软件、服务和智能联系在一起的传道者。你最终会为你的客户带来更多价值"

但阿克罗伊德明确承认，在PRO Unlimited和整个行业，人员和专业知识至关重要：多学科和领域专业知识、项目执行、客户成功和客户支持。

“我将从员工开始，保持我们世界一流的服务提供和完美的执行，”他说。“20年来，这一直是MSP的标志。它需要继续保持下去，因为最终，虽然技术平台将为C-Suite实现阶跃功能转换，但对技术支持的托管服务的需求也将继续强烈。这十年不会改变，无论技术多么先进，基于机器的在接下来的九年里，人工智能（PRO在所有领域都处于领先地位）将成为一种学习方式。我们做得比任何人都好。”

“But what I think is missing,” he continued, “is you also need to have the advisory, analysis and business intelligence/decisioning people offerings. I don't want to get into management, consulting or build an HCM practice. But there's a big layer we need to step up into, there's this higher end advisory component that we are putting on top of traditional staff aug, MSP, etc. We literally sit on decades of experiences, hundreds of Fortune 1000 experience, we’ve seen trillions of dollars of spend, and we sit on petabytes of industry data. We are the only player with these assets, and I can’t wait to harness them and begin delivering value for our clients and partners with them.”

除了上述主题（显然利用数据是核心），阿克罗伊德还讨论了一系列其他主题，从SOW到直接采购，从合作到收购。他还从概念和非常具体的角度讨论了PRO Unlimited平台业务和基础设施的组成部分，包括将在未来几个月开始推向市场的解决方案。

在我们的谈话中,Akeroyd显然受到信任himself as a savvy executive who had led service/technology/data businesses through digital transformation as well as a super quick study in the contingent workforce.

We look forward to following Kevin Akeroyd’s leadership of PRO Unlimited and how the company will evolve, differentiate itself and create new value for companies in the coming years.